INDIANAPOLIS — Kurt Warner was standing alone in front of the whirling baggage belt, minding his own business, checking his text messages, when he was politely interrupted.

So, Kurt, I said, after introducing myself as a Broncos reporter for The Denver Post, is Tim Tebow going to make it?

Warner paused and gave it some thought.

“I don’t know,” Warner said. “He’s going to have to improve, let’s say that. I think you saw at the end of the season that he’s going to have to pass better. I think he will get better because he’ll work at it. But I don’t know — it’s tough for a running quarterback to become a passing quarterback.”

Tebow, proclaimed the Broncos’ starting quarterback entering training camp by front-office boss John Elway, understands he has to improve on his pocket passing. Broncos coach John Fox does not plan on becoming a read-option team for the long term.

Expect the Broncos to have more draft interest in Oklahoma State gunslinger Brandon Weeden, in other words, than Wisconsin’s remarkably gifted, if undersized athlete Russell Wilson.

Super Bowl XLVI provides a mountain of evidence that teams can no longer reach the ultimate game on running the ball and defense alone.

In fact, the NFL’s greatest myth is defense wins championships. The New York Giants ranked 27th in the 32-team league in defense this season. The New England Patriots ranked 31st.

And here they are. Why? The answer is in the Super Bowl prop lines set by Las Vegas’ Pregame.com for quarterbacks Tom Brady and Eli Manning.

The over/under for New England’s Brady in this game is 320.5 yards and 2.5 touchdown passes. For New York’s Manning, the lines are set on 314.5 yards and 2.5 touchdown passes.

Here is the world championship, the biggest game on the planet, and the oddsmakers expect an Arena League game.

“The game has changed so that it takes away a lot of what those defensive guys can do,” Warner said. “Even since I played, it’s changed.”

Wait a minute. Wasn’t Warner playing just two seasons ago?

“The biggest thing that’s changed is how you can throw the ball in the middle of the field now,” Warner said. “You take away the ability (for defenders) to unload on receivers? That changes the game a ton. We could not throw down the middle of the field when I played like they can now.”

The NFL started heavily penalizing, and fining, hits against defenseless receivers in 2010. So that’s why Bill Belichick changed his offense from one geared around deep-ball wide receiver Randy Moss when the Patriots reached the Super Bowl four years ago against the Giants, to an attack now centered around tight ends Dan Gronkowski and Aaron Hernandez and slot man Wes Welker.

The Patriots’ passing game is now routed between the hash marks. Counting their two playoff victories, Welker, Gronkowski and Hernandez have combined to catch 329 of Brady’s 449 completions this season (73.3 percent) and 38 of his 45 touchdown passes (84.4 percent).

Then again, with two weeks remaining in the regular season, the Giants were 7-7 with the tough New York Jets and Dallas Cowboys left on their schedule while the Broncos were 8-6 with lowly Buffalo and Kansas City remaining.

Mike Klis was with The Denver Post from Jan. 1, 1998 before leaving in 2015 to join KUSA 9News. He covered the Rockies and Major League Baseball until the 2005 All-Star break, when he was asked to start covering the Broncos.

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